Telcordia is back and working hard to win a US number portability contract. Really?
I don’t usually post legal or commercial company vs. company news, but this week a Washington Post article about Telcordia caught my eye. Because it’s an article about Telcordia. A company that ceased to exist in 2012 after being bought by Ericsson, and whose brand disappeared pretty soon afterwards (you still occasionally see products described as ‘previously known as Telcordia’ on a few landing pages).
The article is about their bid for the lucrative US number portability contract where they are up against the incumbent supplier Neustar. I can only assume that this throw-back is an attempt to wrap themselves in the Stars and Stripes to appeal to the US federal body awarding the contract. Fair deuce, I say.
The Washington Post then torpedoed the branding by describing Telcordia as anything but a local lad:
…a subsidiary of Swedish telecom giant Ericsson that provides number portability in India
At the time of the acquisition by Ericsson there was some talk about how they would continue to serve certain US government contracts from the new European mother-ship. A Chinese Wall was built around one such Telcordia entity, at the time known as Advanced Technology Solutions, allowing it to operate as an autonomous, US-based proxy. But it, too, dropped the Telcordia name during the transition and was subsequently acquired itself by a US-based firm.
Ericsson also continues to maintain the old Telcordia offices in Piscataway, NJ, as an Ericsson pied-à-terre.
After a thorough five minutes of Googling I can find no other indication that Telcordia exists separately as a brand or legal entity. So, perhaps this is simply an echo from a bid process that pre-dated the acquisition?